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The 'Original' Creative Crafting Magazine written by Crafters, for Crafters

Creative Crafting magazine began in August/September 2009, when a group of crafting friends on the Creative Connections network decided that it would be a good idea to raise awareness of the crafting community. From this point they started work and the first issue of Creative Crafting was published in October 2009 and are still publishing today.

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

DIY snow drift Christmas wreath

The one thing that has been missing from my festive display for the past couple of years is a decent wreath for my front door and all of the off-the-shelf ones that I see in the shops are not quite right. Don’t get me wrong, they are super-pretty and I’d be happy to have any of them hanging on my door but I’m rather picky about the colours, the size and the adornments and I think I would feel more satisfaction from crafting my own wreath and get exactly the look I was hoping for.

For the past couple of years I’ve been decorating the ceiling of my hallway with white fairy lights, paper snowflakes and white baubles to give the impression of falling snow. It’s definitely been inspired by the decorations that Buddy hangs up in the toy store in one of my favourite Christmas films ‘Elf’ and I want to make it look like the walkway into Santa’s grotto. So based on my existing hallway decorations, I thought that I should try to make my own snow-covered wreath as the centrepiece for my Lapland-esque entrance and to give an idea of what’s to come behind the door!

So I hopped onto the Hobbycraft website and picked up a pack of glitter snowballs, silver bells, white wool, glue sticks, ribbon and a polystyrene ring as the starting point for my Christmas creation. I wanted a little penguin character to be the main focus of the wreath so I looked at the decorations available and I picked out this super-sweet skiing penguin – perfect! When the delivery arrived I got straight to work and made my door wreath within an hour and a half – honestly, you’ve never seen someone so excited and enthusiastic with a glue gun as I was that day!

Snow - I started my project by wrapping a strip of fluffy white fleece all the way around the polystyrene ring to give it a snowy base – you could use towelling, wadding or even a ‘snow blanket’ to create this wintery background at home. I used the glue gun to attach it securely at the back and started work on the pom-poms.

Pom-Poms - I knew I wanted to
include some fluffy woolly pom-poms snowballs in the design so I set about
making my own. I didn’t need any cardboard rings or any special pom-pom-making
contraptions to create the pom-poms, and here’s a top tip for making the
quickest pom-poms ever: Wrap the wool around your hand and keep wrapping until
it’s a really thick bunch of wool. Slip it off your hand and use the loose end
to tie around the middle and knot to secure. Next snip through the wool loops
at both sides and fluff out your pom-pom in super-fast time!

Snowballs - I began constructing my ‘snow drift’ around the bottom of the wreath by gluing on large snowballs at the base, followed by the wool pom-poms on top. I then used a pack of 100 mini snow-balls all over the rest of the ring, leaving a gap at the top centre for the ribbon to hang it with. I built up the snowballs around the sides to make the ‘drift’ deeper towards the base.

Bells - The next step was to glue the silver bells amongst
the snow balls to create a pleasing ‘jingle’ whenever the door is opened or
closed. I used tiny bells towards the top of the wreath, increasing in size
towards the bottom of the snow drift.

Ribbon - I measured a long length of ribbon (double the
length that I wanted it to hang down on my front door) and folded it
in half. I securely glued this loop in the centre of the wreath so that
the wreath could be hung from the ribbon but if you already have a door hanger
for your wreath, you wouldn’t need the ribbon too. I finished the centre with a
decorative bow: I formed a bow from the satin ribbon and then used the hot glue
gun to stick it to the centre, which gave a much neater finish than trying to
tie it on.

Penguin - Finally, I snipped the
hanging loop off my penguin tree decoration and I applied some glue to the base
of his skis and ski pole before positioning him skiing out of the snow-drift.
I’d definitely saved the best bit to last and it really was the ideal finishing
touch to the wreath. Here you could use a different decoration, such as Father
Christmas, a polar bear, a couple of elves or even an Olaf snowman
decoration to create a wreath inspired by Disney’s ‘Frozen’. Alternatively you
could leave out the decoration altogether and have a simple snowball wreath to
adorn your festive door this Christmas.

I was so pleased with how it turned out that I
decided it would look great hanging on the door of my little vintage caravan workshop. I’ve
already enjoyed listening to the gentle jingle of the bells and the
penguin always makes me smile as I approach the caravan to get on with some
more work. Yes, he always gets a “Hello Penguini” from me as I open the door!